I need some revision tips for English lit/ lang my mocks are in June.

Do you have any tips for revising English lit or Lang for GCSE, I don't know where to start. How should I revise the set texts and poems?

I did my GCSEs two years ago now, so this may be a bit outdated, especially with any changes to the curriculum caused by the pandemic, but I would recommend that you do not revise every single poem. In the anthology there will always be 4 or 5 poems that contain the most thematic links to each other and other poems, so I would recommend only revising the ones like that, so that you have to remember less quotes and explaining the thematic links between poems may be easier. For example, I did the Power and Conflict anthology, and revised only War Photographer, Poppies, Exposure, Kamikaze, Tissue, and My Last Duchess.

I'd also highly recommend looking at last years paper and seeing what themes and characters the questions were about for the books, and which poem and theme you were asked about in the poetry section - for example the 2018 paper was about Ozymandias, so I did next to know revision on Ozymandias since there was a strong chance it was not going to come up again and that the theme it asks about would have tenuous (at best) links to Ozymandias. All that lead to me getting 30/30 on the poetry question in my mock, so it does kind of work I guess.

The books are much more difficult to advise you on, as I don't know which 3 you're doing, but as a vague catch all advice, I'd suggest looking for some key scenes to do with characters and themes (soliloquys, descriptive paragraphs or dialogue between 2 people usually) and sticking to those few scenes to memorise good quotes from them, instead of pulling random quotes from the entire book. It is important to know some quotes from other places though, just in case the passage you revised is the one given to you in the exam.

Lang again is much more difficult to help with. The way I got a 9 in my GCSEs for Lang is by making sure that I skim read the passage before attempting any questions and underlined key ideas and phrases to analyse. I also messed around with the order of questions a bit, and did the large mark questions first and leaving the 4 markers to the end of the paper so that I could maximise marks gained and that my revision of how to lay out and structure the longer questions was fresher in my head. Other than that I just had to do a hell of a lot of practise questions and papers, and asked for my teacher to mark them.

So sorry about the wall of text, hope there's something helpful here

any teacher feedback you can share: AQA English Language.

God that was a long time ago, but I'll try my best.

Basically I was told to look deeper into texts, to kind of find something that's only a little bit meaningful on the surface level but has a lot of subtext and to pick it apart to its bare bones to try and tie the quote to the central theme of the question. It takes a bit of effort to do but it's well worth it in the essay to completely pick apart one quote for a paragraph rather than using 3 or 4 less meaningful quotes to prove a more flimsy point. You have to be good at finding those kind of 'hidden' below the surface level quotes but it gets really easy when you get used to finding them. So for my GCSEs I only used 3 or 4 quotes in my big 20 mark questions instead of some of my friends who'd use 10 or more quotes for that question.

For the fictional creative writing you need to use a lot of different methods of description and dialogue (if you're including dialogue) to get high marks. To get top marks, however you pretty much NEED to have a central theme surrounding the stuff you write, and every aspect of the text needs to link back to that theme, you can't just throw in a simile or metaphor or pathetic fallacy without it really moulding well to the text as a whole. The theme doesn't have to be anything high level or special, mine was about culture, which is quite broad and vague, but just including a theme and tying the writing well to it shows examiners that you understand how to write fiction well in a way that if you were to become and author you stuff would be analysed in English lessons for years to come, even though you, like every other author, meant that the door was blue and not that the door represents the character's depression and isolative tendencies when you write 'he exited through the blue door'. It basically shows you understand what the examiners like to see in an author and can write super well.

For the article based creative writing, you should ALWAYS include a counterargument. It has to be done in a certain way though, so that the marker doesn't think you've made it look like you've changed opinion half way through. To get good marks you should choose one opinion on the subject and stick to it the whole time, while including other views and opinions before basically shredding them and telling the examiner why that opinion is wrong. The conclusion is also extremely important, if you're running low on time you should wrap up the paragraph you're doing ASAP and move onto a balanced and thoughtful conclusion that still sticks to one side of the argument.

Thank you, that was really useful. Im only doing paper 1 and it was really helpful how you explained it. I have just one more thing if you dont mind: do you have any of your notes still with you that you can send(for paper 1 aqa)?

I did my GCSEs two years ago now, so this may be a bit outdated, especially with any changes to the curriculum caused by the pandemic, but I would recommend that you do not revise every single poem. In the anthology there will always be 4 or 5 poems that contain the most thematic links to each other and other poems, so I would recommend only revising the ones like that, so that you have to remember less quotes and explaining the thematic links between poems may be easier. For example, I did the Power and Conflict anthology, and revised only War Photographer, Poppies, Exposure, Kamikaze, Tissue, and My Last Duchess.

I'd also highly recommend looking at last years paper and seeing what themes and characters the questions were about for the books, and which poem and theme you were asked about in the poetry section - for example the 2018 paper was about Ozymandias, so I did next to know revision on Ozymandias since there was a strong chance it was not going to come up again and that the theme it asks about would have tenuous (at best) links to Ozymandias. All that lead to me getting 30/30 on the poetry question in my mock, so it does kind of work I guess.

The books are much more difficult to advise you on, as I don't know which 3 you're doing, but as a vague catch all advice, I'd suggest looking for some key scenes to do with characters and themes (soliloquys, descriptive paragraphs or dialogue between 2 people usually) and sticking to those few scenes to memorise good quotes from them, instead of pulling random quotes from the entire book. It is important to know some quotes from other places though, just in case the passage you revised is the one given to you in the exam.

Lang again is much more difficult to help with. The way I got a 9 in my GCSEs for Lang is by making sure that I skim read the passage before attempting any questions and underlined key ideas and phrases to analyse. I also messed around with the order of questions a bit, and did the large mark questions first and leaving tThe 4 markers to the end of the paper so that I could maximise marks gained and that my revision of how to lay out and structure the longer questions was fresher in my head. Other than that I just had to do a hell of a lot of practise questions and papers, and asked for my teacher to mark them.

So sorry about the wall of text, hope there's something helpful here

Thank you I will attempt to start my revision now! By the way, I am studying Lord of the flies, Macbeth, A Christmas carol and love and relationship poems.

Thank you I will attempt to start my revision now! By the way, I am studying Lord of the flies, Macbeth, A Christmas carol and love and relationship poems.

I did Macbeth, Jekyll and Hyde, An Inspector Calls and The Power and Conflict Anthology, so unfortunately I can't help you much there.

For Macbeth I'd suggest not using the scenes with the witches too much because they feel a little bit like a beginner's trap for quotes regarding the themes of power and the occult. They are useful though, so that doesn't mean you shouldn't use them, I'd just suggest to use the quotes to back up other, stronger quotes. Also, according to my teacher the scene where the witches summon Hecate, the Greek Goddess of Witchcraft, Magic and Paths (as in choices you can make in the future, paths you'll take) is apparently not a scene Shakespeare wrote and was congregated into the play at some point after he died to make the witches return at a point in the story where they were not included very much. I don't know the validity of that statement, but it may be best to avoid that scene when memorising quotes.

Lady Macbeth's soliloquy in Act 1 Scene 5 is a VERY good place to source quotes, with loads of really good quotes that you can link to the themes of the Occult, Power, Feminism etc, and is a fantastic place for quotes should the character question be about Lady Macbeth. Other characters have quotes a bit more spread out, but one of my favourites for Macbeth's character is 'stars hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires'. You can also source some really good ones from the banquet scene where Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost, or from the scene where Lady Macbeth is goading him into committing regicide. Macbeth is a good character to link to the themes of power, corruption and masculinity. Unfortunately I've forgotten the other character's major quotes and where to find them, so I can't help any more than that, sorry.

i just did my mocks for eng lit ,for Macbeth we got how lady Macbeth changes over time and for power n conflict we got remains i compared it to war photographer n we got an unseen poetry about love, for aqa. Hope that helps good luck!

Hi ! For the remains / war photographer poem, do you know what the theme / question was ?